Your Sarcastic Guide To Alleged Plot Holes In ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

One of my biggest pet peeves in movies is dealing with crappy audiences, people who are either too lazy or stupid to figure out stuff that any intelligent person paying attention can figure out.

Even worse are the retroactive whiners, the people who desperately want to tear a movie down because everybody likes it and we all know that what everyone likes can’t be of any real quality.

So, here’s your guide to supposed plot holes from both camps, and why they’re largely a load of crap.

How Did X Know Bruce Wayne Was Batman?

This comes in two flavors: How did Bane know everything about Batman? And how did John Blake figure out Bruce Wayne was Batman?

To address the first: gee, I don’t know, how did the massive terrorist organization led by the antagonist of the first movie know who Bruce Wayne was? They only trained him and burned down his house. Similarly, it’s pretty easy with that information to put together that he’s Batman and that he has to be hiding all those heavy weapons somewhere. I can see this being a problem for people who didn’t see the first movie, but this is something professional film blogs were whining about.

To address the second: it’s not really a huge logical jump that the well-funded vigilante with all these advanced toys would have something to do with the local trillionaire. Blake’s entire speech was about how he saw right through Bruce’s routine about being a rich idiot with no day job, which is really the only thing that keeps people from realizing he’s Batman anyway. A better question is why Bruce didn’t establish that he and Batman are different people, like they did in the comics.

Batman Totally Heals Too Quickly For a Real World Back Injury

So, wait, you were OK with the constantly stoned body-builder, the decades-away fusion reactor, the insane helicopter, the city totally cut off from the rest of America by a terrorist, and the high-level jewel thief in a unitard on the motorcycle with the spinny wheel firing Howitzer shells, but the guy in the Batsuit getting over a broken back in a few months… that’s what bothers you, Captain Scientific Accuracy?

What bothers me about this crap is people whining about minor details in blatant fantasies. If you can’t roll with it, fine, but don’t act like it’s some sort of outrage that they glossed over medical science.

Bane’s Stock Scam Would Never Work In The Real World

It is true it’d be fairly easy to figure out that these trades were fraudulent, especially as they occurred during a massive terrorist attack.

Then again, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that the kind of person who wants to commit securities exchange fraud under Bruce Wayne’s name would be aware of this. We’re talking about the kind of people who spend most of a decade planning revenge. They’re detail-oriented.

I’m more surprised that Talia slept with Bruce than Bruce with Talia. She’s been planning his complete destruction for years, hates the man for killing her father, but gives him one last boning for kicks. She already had his trust, since this happened after he showed her the nuclear weapon. I just don’t see what she had to gain. But Bruce…yeah, I get that.

With me, it’s because the movie takes itself so seriously that when something is glossed over, seemingly creating a plot hole, it seems jarring. Nolan just wants you to accept whatever he throws at you without explanation sometimes. Although most of the holes you mentioned weren’t the ones that bothered me.

I’m pretty sure it was after she had already done her boardroom maneuvering since the power went out when she was at his house and he’d lost all his cash. She had everything she needed at that point. He had shown her the reactor and then she took control in the boardroom as he was kicked out for not being on the board any longer.

I’m surprised he slept with her partly because one of the reasons he was in seclusion for 8 yrs was because he got his girlfriend blown up and once he came out in public he essentially slept with the 2nd woman he has a real conversation with. After she betrays him he creates a new life with the other woman who was busy stealing his dead mothers jewels. Way to recover buddy.

The reason he was in seclusion was because he thought she went to her grave “thinking we would be together”. When Alfred tells him the truth it shakes him from his would-be fairytale dead girlfriend romance allowing him to return both as Batman AND Bruce Wayne.

As for Selina Kyle, he never does a 180 on his feelings there. From the very first scene he’s far more intrigued by her than he is bothered that she stole the jewelry. If you’re going to complain about the Bat and Cat relationship, I’d say the safe bet is going to the part where she leads him into a death trap.

Dan summed it up pretty well in the article, really. If you think a lonely and broken man looking for some female companionship is a flaw in the script, you just might not understand human beings very well.

My problem with the Selina Kyle thing was that, as a character, why would Batman want to start a new life with her? First she lifts his fingerprints to give to Bane to crush the Wayne empire, and then she serves Batman up to Bane to have his back broken? I don’t know, maybe I’m not getting it, but it just seemed like for Bruce to want to create a new life with her so readily was not true to character.

Talia is the progeny of Ras. She feels that Bruce was the son Ras wanted. Ras loved Bruce like a son, so Bruce’s seeming betrayal of Ras stung that much more. Talia adopted her father’s philosophy and world view. In order to complete the revenge on Bruce, it had to be a betrayal equal to that he inflicted upon Ras. Since Talia couldn’t become like a son to Bruce, she did one better….she became a lover to this eminently solitary man. She gained his trust in the most intimate way, then betrayed it. As Ras said “Justice is balance. You burned my house down and left me for dead. Consider us even.”

“Talia al Ghul is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe, the now-estranged daughter of the supervillain Ra’s al Ghul, a love interest of Batman, and the mother of his son Damian Wayne, the fifth Robin.”
Basically if you ever actually read some Batman, this was absolutely no surprise.

Dan, let me tell you what *MY* pet peeve is: idiots who get their panties in a wad when other people have opinions. Apparently, you’ve based your entire sense of self-worth around whether or not other people liked “Dark Knight Rises”. Either your a child, an imbecile, or both.

Furthermore, you don’t appear to understand what the word “sarcastic” means. You apparently think it means “douchebaggy”. It doesn’t. Buy a dictionary. Now, let’s talk about your “guide”, shall we? Your rely on two answers to everything: “it’s perfectly logical and consistent with reality, so shut up” and “It’s a fantasy movie! Anything can happen! Shut up!” Seriously, are you twelve?

You might want to pull your head out of your ass and realize that not everyone in the world is going share your personal tastes. It doesn’t make them “stupid” or “liars who only have different opinions to annoy you”, as you seem to believe.

I loved the first two films, but can’t say I was a fan of this one. Some of your points I can get on board with, others.. not so much. The back breaking thing was ridiculous for a universe that strives to give a semblance of realism. The review on comicsalliance pointed it out best with “a broken back is fixed with a rope and a swift punch to the spine administered by two prison yodas” who are there, why? These are the only two people we see interact with Bruce down there, and all they do is try to heal and help him, and somehow do? It was too much for a Batman movie.

Speaking of Batman, where was he? The first time he goes down to fight Bane I can understand going in with a level of overconfidence which led to the incredibly underwhelming back breaking scene. What I can’t get behind is that after that, his plan is the exact same. Go in and get in a fist fight with the insane human tank, because that worked so well the first time. Now, after the fastest recovery of a broken back ever, it works. Where is the meticulous planning that makes Batman the fucking Batman? They kind of abandoned that aspect in the second film as well, but that film was all about chaos so it would be impossible to plan. In this one he’s just fighting a really strong person. I would think that he would maybe think of something a little smarter than charging in headfirst.

Bane’s voice was hilarious though, I can’t stop talking like him.

It just seemed like a bit of a slapped together mediocre film to me. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it certainly wasn’t a good movie, in my opinion anyway.

I, for one, am finished praising/criticizing the Batman Trilogy and I’d like to put it in my rearview mirror.It’s really tearing this country apart. I personally cant wait until we can all come together as one nation and totally lambast the next Adam Sandler movie.

Can I still complain that the pacing of the first half hour was complete shit, or that there wasn’t enough Michael Caine, or that Bruce’s knee gets all magic fixed by a brace, or that Matthew Modine’s character was completely horrible and worthless? Is that whining, even though I enjoyed the film overall but found faults with it? Just curious.

And that’s exactly why I saw the spine healing as a plot hole – not because it didn’t jive with the real world but because it broke the logic within the movie itself. Wayne needed a cybernetic knee brace to walk without a cane because he didn’t have cartilage in his knee, but can somehow manage to deal with a broken back just fine a few months later. If you want to do that spine scene, fine, it is kind of badass. But don’t do it after you’ve already established the character’s frailty.

Still a great movie for all its flaws. But the one I still can’t seem to get over is the cops being trapped in the sewers. They’re called man holes ppl. There is one like every block. Also that when they get out, they look as fresh and clean as they did 3 months ago when they went in. As for his injury, I assume its from the end of part two when he falls like 4 stories. Although it was weird that he needed robo legs to walk/fight, but hanging from a special rope got him into perfect shape :S

I thought that John Blake’s conclusion that Bruce Wayne is Batman was meant to mimic Tim Drake figuring out the same in the comics. Albeit, in the movie it was fast-tracked, we know that Blake, after his conversation with Gordon on the rooftop, has had an interest in the identity of Batman after the events of the Dark Knight. While Blake doesn’t go into detail, he could have been investigating, as he had shown a skill for, the identity of Batman for the past 8 years since TDK. Personally, I didn’t mind this part because it had happened in the comics (of course actually reading the comics is a small step that I would wager 70% of TDKR’s audience has never once done, lest they look like a nerd). Same thing with his fling with Talia.

Also, although numerous times Bane states that he will “break” the Batman it becomes extremely evident that he in fact didn’t snap his back in half. In all honesty, Bane most likely dislocated Bruce’s vertebrae…which “the rope guy” stated when he stood him up…so, 4 months isn’t a stretch.

I agree with this, it’s a really cool movie, some real pissy reactions out there. It’s going to end up in the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service club of misunderstood sequels, playing air hockey with Temple of Doom.

I think the trade scandal was the smallest hole in the plot. They used a sophisticated program to change the past records, they didn’t make the trades go through on the day of the attack.
It was also stated that this can be proven and undone, but it’s going to take time, something they didn’t have at the moment.

The only thing that really bugged was that they showed Wayne Enterprises clearly had 2 Batwings. At first I wanted to believe that the unpainted one was the one they used for the rest of the film, and they just painted it black. But then at the end Lucius and two other guys are examining the bat (the silver) again? So there is clearly 2, which draws questions like why wouldn’t bane use this Bat to counter Batmans Bat, or just in general as a powerful vehicle? Unless that scene was them looking at scraps from the bat the bat the got nuked—which would be incredible dumb, even for a movie about a guy who dresses as a Bat.

On the cops buried underground: Bane seemed to want the people of Gotham to be in control, which is why his thugs usually don’t outright kill people and instead send them to the tribunals. He seemed to be intentionally keeping the cops trapped to keep them out of the way without overexerting his power and destroying the whole populist illusion thing. That’s how I saw it, at least.

What got me was how they handled the bomb. The Bat had to get a minimum of 6 miles (the blast radius) outside of Gotham in the 1 minute before the bomb exploded, so roughly 360 miles per hour assuming it starts at the coast and has already accelerated to that speed (which doesn’t look like it was the case in the film, but who knows). That’s feasible, but how strong does that cable have to be to not tear off while dragging a giant bomb below it? Is the outside of the bomb treated with some material that can take that kind of wind resistance? And what about fallout?

Then again, there are also howitzer bikes and fusion reactors. The movie was great, regardless of the minor quibbles.

Love the trilogy, loved this movie, and I agree with pretty much everything you said, but one thing is still bothering me: how old is Bane supposed to be? Talia/Miranda looks to be about 8 when Bane helps her escape from that prison. Actress Marion Cotillard is 36, assuming that Talia/Miranda is supposed to be somewhere around the age of the actress playing her, that would have made her escape from the prison about 28 years before the beginning of DKR, right? Bane in the flashbacks looks to be a grown ass man (and by that I mean well into his 20s). Is he supposed to be in his 50s?

I refuse to believe batman got his ass whooped by some 50 year old guy.

My biggest disappointment was the first fight between Batman and Bane. Just seemed that he yelled and flailed away at Bane, tossed a pathetic little smoke bomb-thingy and not much else. I would have liked it better if he had been more Batman-like: overconfident to be sure – he IS the Goddamned Batman after all – but he came across to me as an amateur. Think it would have been more powerful if it was Batman at his best, and still been beaten.
Overall I enjoyed the movie a lot, and think it caps off a damned good trilogy (Jesus, thanks for reminding me about that asshat and his look-at-me-I-went-to-film-school-so-I’m-a-smug-douche video. If anyone deserves to be punched in the head for the sound of his voice, he earns it).
I have to wonder if Heath Ledger had lived how his Joker might have figured into the movie. That might have been a fun bit of chaos Bane couldn’t predict or plan for…

Well, he seemed less like an amateur to me and more like a guy who had been out of the game for 8 years, which is what they were trying to drive home. Even after an 8 year absence he was able to dismantle any thugs he encountered and escape the police, so when he found himself backed against a wall he went toe-to-toe with Bane like he did with every other villain in the franchise. I agree that it would have been interesting to see Batman lose even when doing everything right, but part of Bane’s thing is that he isn’t just a brawler. In the comics and in the film, Bane catches Batman off guard and exhausted and uses that to ensure his own easy victory. He tests Batman mentally and physically. If Batman went into the fight and did absolutely everything right and still lost, then Bane would just be a boring invincible villain. He was already pretty close to that as it is.

Perhaps – I mean I get that he was rusty and not in top form. Just seemed the yelling and all was a bit much for me.
I guess once Gotham fell it all felt too rushed for me. That whole sequence could have been a movie unto itself, I think.

I assume the yelling was playing up the point that Batman thought Bane was just another League goon and was way wrong. You’re supposed to exhale when you throw a punch and some people yell to do that thinking there may be a psychological advantage. I saw this as just another thing Batman thought to try to intimidate Bane, like the flash bang and cutting out the lights.

Has anyone explained how Bane/Talia knew of the secret bunker that held the extra tumblers and other tech? Did I miss how they found out, because it was explicitly stated that only Lucius and Bruce knew of it.

Because Bruce put Talia in charge of Wayne Enterprises like a chump, and I would assume she was then privy to some of that info. Also, The league of shadows could have easily been looking into all this stuff while Bruce was away for eight fucking years being a little bitch.

“It amuses me that I went through pages of rants by professionals and not one asked, at any time, why Bane didn’t just kill all those cops trapped underground.”

How about his whole “hope as a weapon” speech? Bane’s treatment of the cops basically = vaguely Middle Eastern underground jail where he sent Bruce. Watch the movie, bro. Connect some dots and you’ll be streets ahead.

Or in your words, “Cuz they had to lead a WWI charge in the third act of the movie! Stop whinin’ ya dummies!”

Bruce leaves Gotham and trains around the world for like 6 years. He comes back and between Begins and TDK he is Batman for maybe one year. Then he says “fuck it” and quits for 8 years. out of almost 16 years, Bruce is Batman for less than one. and then he fakes his death so he can quit being Batman again. That’s one of the biggest problems with this movie. Bruce is a bitch.

Also, the last time he was Batman was during Dent’s death, which the public think Batman cause. The public thinks Batman murdered Dent, yet they also look up to him and see him as some symbol of hope. That makes no sense. And there is no way a 13 year old kid is going to know who Batman is and look up to him, considering the kid was 5 when Bruce punked out. 5 years old’s are dumb and can’t remember shit.

And you’ve hit on my biggest problem with this movie. I love the movie, and the trilogy, but as a lifelong Batman fanboy….

Bruce Wayne would NOT make a vow to avenge his parents’ murder; spend his teens and twenties perfecting his mind and body; sacrifice his life, relationships, happiness, and chance with “Rachel,” just to walk away from it all….TWICE.

Again, this is not a referendum on these movies. I love the trilogy (Begins rules), as I love all Christopher Nolan’s movies. It was just disappointing, maybe BECAUSE of how much I tend to like the psychological aspects of Nolan’s movies. In Begins, Nolan really seemed to show a strong understanding of Bruce Wayne, and of the obsession that drives him. But then in this movie, Bruce has walked away for 8 years, albeit for a pretty good reason. It serves a purpose, so I can live with that. But to give up so he can “run away” from it all…that is NOT the Bruce Wayne that I grew up with.

I understand this is Nolan’s world, and Nolan’s version of Bruce Wayne. But since Nolan talked so much about obsession, I just hoped he would key in on the fact that Bruce simply could NEVER walk away from the Batman, even if he wanted to. Which, of course, he does not really want to.

Porky, agreed. That’s part of what makes Batman so riveting, for me. Is he really any better than his rogues? Is his obsession really all that different than what drives Joker, Riddler, and their ilk? After all, Bruces obsession is what drove him to travel the globe for the better part of a decade, trainng himself to “human perfection” Nolan seemed headed down this road several times. Alfred’s warning in BB that Bruce is “getting lost inside this monster”. Joker’s taunt that he and Batman should share a padded cell at Arkham. The whole theme of Batman’s very existence causing escalation from “crazies”.

I think this is why the Joker has always been such a great foil. For all of Bruce’s high and mighty moralism, Joker often asks Bats if either of them is “more sane” than the other.

Owing along with the Tim Drake talk, “A lonely Place of Dying” could have been a good launching off point for another story….where Bruce’s obsession becomes so complete that Batman is not the true face, but largely the only one, and Bruce is truly becoming lost inside Batman.

An entire police force trapped in the sewers emerges unscathed, clean shaven, well fed and ready to fight an army of mercernaries and criminals that are armed to the teeth. Really? Thats really what they’re going with?

Regarding the stock scheme, there’s basically no chance this would ever work. Trading will stop in a certain stock if the price drops suddenly for no reason; if a bunch of dudes stormed the building with machine guns they would suspend all trades that took place after the break-in happened.

People who are talking about plot holes that are unrealistic….. get a grip! its a goddamn comic book movie about a bat man! The only thing that bothered me about the movie, was everything after Talia revealed herself, up until the bomb went off……. And its not because they were unrealistic things, its that they were incredibly lame cliches that really didn’t need to be done. IMO Talia should have been left out completely, there just wasnt enough time to develop her character, and she basically ruined Banes character when she revealed it was her all along. I cringed when Gordon was fumbling with the reactor core, and actually dropped it only to put it back in place at the last second. Then Batman decides to fly the bomb out, and that is the perfect time for a KISS! Not to mention the whole scene supposedly took place in 11 minutes. Again, I can set aside realism, that doesn’t bother me. It just bothers me that all of those things could have been avoided. Having said that, the ending completely redeemed that dreadfully cliched scene.

It wasn’t a bad fillmore, but probably the poorest of the trilogy IMO.

The thing that annoyed me the most was that with about 1:30 left on the clock before the fusion reactor exploded batman and cat woman decided to waste about half that time making out. She’s hot and everything buti think that’s a tad irresponsible. Similar things have happened in several movies and it always pisses me off. There’s plenty of time for that after you save the city, keep your mind on the task at hand. Also how did batman survive that blast? Was the helicopter thing lined with a few inches of lead? And if so how did it fly?

The reason this movie sucked isn’t because of the plot holes or expository dialogue or bad acting, it’s because Batman isn’t the one that saved the day, it was the villains ego/laziness that did.

If Talia had decided not to torture Gotham at all, Batman would have lost.

If the half-life on the reactor core had been 4 months, Batman would have lost.

If Talia hadn’t decided to hang out at a bonfire with Lucius Fox for 5 months instead decided, “Eh, three months of torture is plenty, let’s blow this place and get Chic-Fil-A” then Batman would have lost.

If Lucius hadn’t just happened to make the Bat and keep it in his U-Stor-It until Bruce got bored enough to be Batman again, then Batman would have lost.

If Catwoman hadn’t decided to prove Batman’s gun stance as ineffective, then Bane would have killed Batman at the end, and he would have lose.

If Talia, after pretending to be Miranda Tate and eating bonfire takeout for five months, had flipped out when Catwoman dumped Bruce Fucking Wayne in front of her and just shot his ass the moment she saw him and their plan was instantly in danger, Batman would have lost.

This movie sucks because Batman only saved the day after everyone around him waffled every opportunity they had to win with laziness and ego and downright stupidity.

See, and I’d argue against Dark Knight being “great,” too. You pull Ledger’s performance out of that movie, replace him with Hardy’s Bane or Murphy’s Scarecrow and I don’t think the movie holds up, either.

Ledger’s performance is so brilliant it elevates everything around it, perhaps unfairly.

My biggest gripe with the movie was how sanitised the violence was. This also applied to the language. The nearest thing we had to a swearword was Talia mouthing the word “Shit” whilst being harassed by the Bat during the chase. The Dark Knight was a comic book movie as thriller for grown ups. This was just a comic book movie. A good one though.

The only question on this list that made me think twice was Blake knowing who Batman was. He’s the only orphan in Gotham who has ever seen Bruce Wayne’s fake smile? I thought maybe he could have done some detective work or SOMETHING. Put forth some effort, you know? But it didn’t ruin anything for me, my reaction was more like, “Wait, whaaaaat? …ok, whatever.”

I liked the movie a lot, but my biggest problem was actually with Alfred, who gestured up the stairs in the Wayne mansion in reference to Bruce having been born in that house. Ummm… they may have rebuilt, but the house Bruce was born in was burned to the ground. Bruce wasn’t born in the new house, even if it looks like the old one. That bugged me.

It also bugged me that none of the cops who were finally released from the underground said anything to Batman as they passed him. How did they know he was no longer police enemy #1? If they did know, why didn’t they say things of support as they went by? Or say things filled with lingering doubts?

“Even worse are the retroactive whiners, the people who desperately want to tear a movie down because everybody likes it and we all know that what everyone likes can’t be of any real quality.” THANK YOU. Nolan whips up one of the best trilogies in cinema HISTORY, and these assholes have to tear it down because it gives them attention. and let’s face it, EVERYONE LIKES ATTENTION RIGHT? YAY I HAVE SOMETHING TO PUT ON FACEBOOK AND PEOPLE WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME BECAUSE I’M SAYING SOMETHING SHOCKING! people like this should be banned from theaters. You don’t get anything cool anymore because you can’t appreciate it. Sorry. Mommy just took the cake away from you because you were throwing it at people instead of eating it and savoring it.

“He’s the f***ing Batman. Seriously, if any fictional character could pull this one off, it’s the f***ing Batman. Stop whining.”

This isn’t an explanation this is an excuse. Just because Batman has had resources before it’s been made clear he no longer does yet he still gets back to Gotham. I don’t have a problem with the suspension of disbelief that he may have had money stashed away somewhere else or someone gave him a loan to get back to Gotham but if that’s the case then show that happening don’t leave that plot hole there.

OK, he’s a highly trained ninja with a tendency to be ridiculously overprepared for any situation who we’ve seen travel the entire world with no resources whatsoever in the first movie and who at this point is still a key member of a globe-spanning corporate empire with lots of resources he can access with a touch.

Honestly, the only one that bothered me was the stock market complaint, and mainly because everyone was like “Oh look, Bruce Wayne was dumb and lost a ton of money on the stock market” the same day that a terrorist highjacked Gotham’s version of Wall Street. How does no one put two-and-two together there? Wouldn’t the cops wonder what Bane’s plan was when he marched into Wall Street with an army of thugs and then just drove away on a motorcycle? Or did they think he was dumb and could steal cash there and then ran away when he realized he couldn’t?

Yea, I guess that makes sense. I’m just surprised someone at GPD didn’t see the “Wayne Loses Billions!” news story and think that it just miiiiiight have something to do with the attempted attack at the stock market the day before.

I mean the bane I remember from whatever comics and animated shows was a South Amercian strong man born in some war torn country who used Venom to make himself almost invincible and wore a wrestler’s mask

Tom Hardy’s bane was a white strong dude with a messed up face, and wore a type of gas mask.

I just think they kinda took the name bane, kept the minimal parts of the character, and inserted a wholly new sociopath.

Not complaining, I though this bane was cool enough, but it feels more like an original creation rather than a batman character, granted one who whose only been around for 20 years

this is kind of a weak argument though, because we’re talking about Nolan’s trilogy here. Not much of the original “canon” works because of his uber-realistic take on the universe. Look at scarecrow for instance – he’s not a grown man that actually dresses like a scarecrow, but a psychologist who wears a mask and drugs his victims with a “fear” hallucinogenic. Catwoman doesn’t dress like a cat, just a thief. Joker was the most literal translation of the actual villian, and yet he still wasn’t campy, his scenes were void of levity. the chemically-induced “smile” that Nicholson’s Joker had was replaced with scars that were essentially Ledger’s “smile.”
The Batmobile is a Wayne Technologies surplus armed vehicle that looks nothing like the past Batmobiles, very ultra-modern and realistic. There are just some details of super hero universes that just don’t work in modern movies. I think they did the best they could with BANE without making him into the campy and ridiculous brute that they showed in that terrible Schumacher film. Imagine if they did a Justice League movie and literally had Wonder Woman having an invisible jet, with a lasso that makes you tell the truth? there are just some aspects that won’t work on film.

If no one knew batman was bruce wayne, how was the death of Bruce Wayne explained to the public? what was his cause of death? like how batman and Bruce Wayne vanished from the public eye at the same time after the dark knight. god and the fact that the stock exchange can be hijacked, with someone doing some stuff on a high tech computer thingy and leave on motorbikes on the same day as bruce wayne buying shares in myspace NOT BE LINKED?

The ending is also a bit off, he was seen in the bat like 2 seconds before the detonation AND was seen still seated after the explosion that people on the net seem to think he used as smokescreen to escape. part of me wants to think he had another bat plane conveniently hidden somewhere close and just switched during the bombing of those buildings, hence we see him still in one 2 seconds before the detonation.. but i just want to know bruce waynes cause of death, i dont think that was ever mentioned

Gotham was pretty much put through the wringer, and the Wayne Enterprises board in particular got a shit end of the stick. Pretty much ANYONE in Gotham who wanted to fake their death after the occupation would have an easy out.